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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26126617">piggyback rides</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account'>orphan_account</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Haikyuu!!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Blood, Childhood, Fluff, M/M, Tsukkiyama Week, knee injury, not really romantic but little tsukki is Pining a bit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 08:54:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,461</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26126617</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He realized, right then and there, that there were many things that Yamaguchi could get away with just because of the sheer fact that he was Yamaguchi.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Tsukishima Kei &amp; Yamaguchi Tadashi, Tsukishima Kei/Yamaguchi Tadashi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>108</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>TsukkiYama Week 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>piggyback rides</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>this is really short because i honestly didn't plan on writing this and i haven't written anything to post in like...3 years, but the thought came to me in the middle of the night and i had to.<br/>day 3: childhood (but i'm late because this account had to get approved)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Yamaguchi always cried.  In fact, the day they first met, Kei wasn’t even sure if Yamaguchi had properly seen him through the tears flooding his vision because of the taunts he had endured.  He cried at movies (even if they weren’t sad), when he saw a particularly cute dog, and had even cried the first time he had to leave Kei’s house— he had apologized for doing that too, wailing even harder and saying he, “didn’t mean to be annoying, I just don’t have a lot of friends and I really like hanging out with you and I don’t want this to be the last time we hang out because you might start to think I’m stupid too.”  Kei’s stomach had lurched and he had told him to shut up and that of course they would hang out again.  That had cleared the tears right up; the tears never lasted long when they spilled over.  For anyone else, Kei would be irritated, and he did still kind of feel that way when it came to a crying Yamaguchi, but it was mostly irritation with that weird anxious feeling he got whenever his smaller friend’s eyes got round and shiny.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This was an entirely different level.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They were at the playground.  Kei had told him to be careful several times because, for as small as Yamaguchi was, he seemed to be bursting at the seams with energy.  Yamaguchi also struggles with tying his shoes sometimes, a secret that Kei swore he’d never tell anybody.  This disastrous combination led to Yamaguchi tripping on his own shoelaces as he attempted to step off the platform and grab hold of the monkey bars, causing him to yelp and Kei’s head to whip around in time to see him fall.  His other leg, unfortunately, had been behind the pole to steady himself, and Kei watched as it twisted in an odd direction as Yamaguchi went down, causing him to cry out.  The icing on the cake was when that same knee smashed into the gravel.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The tears were instantaneous and so was Kei’s movement, and now, Yamaguchi was wailing on the ground, clutching at his knee.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Stupid.  I told you to be careful,” Kei said, but instead of his usual tone, he sounded panicked.  Usually, Yamaguchi was fairly easy to console once he was upset, but pain was an entirely different story because words couldn’t soothe physical hurt.  He crouched beside his blubbering friend (Yamaguchi was not a pretty crier, especially not now, not that Kei could blame him) and tried prying his friend’s hands away from his knee.  It just made him sob harder, curling in on himself.  “Yamaguchi,” Kei said, trying to keep his voice as level as possible. “I need to see how bad it is.”  There was a chance that Yamaguchi was overreacting, but Kei had seen him fall and wasn’t feeling so optimistic.  Besides, any pain Yamaguchi experienced was too much in his eyes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The smaller boy quieted a tad, nodding rapidly and wiping at his runny nose with his long sleeve.  Kei took the tinier hands and lifted them and his breath hitched.  The skin was scraped and bleeding in a few spots, but that was hardly the important part.  His knee was turning a heated shade of red and swelling up on itself and a few spots seemed to be turning a sick purple.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“C’mon, Yamaguchi, we gotta get you inside somewhere so you can put ice on it.”  He urged the boy to stand up with a hand.  Yamaguchi complied, balancing his body against the pole and keeping all pressure off his right leg.  Kei stared for a few moments, contemplating how exactly to get Yamaguchi to his house like this.  Finally, he came up with a plan.  He crouched down slightly, readying his arms at his side to grab hold of Yamaguchi’s legs.  “Get on my back.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The other boy gasped through his tears.  “N-No!  It’s okay, I can, u-um...I can just walk with you, I don’t w-wanna bother you…”  As if to punctuate this statement, Yamaguchi moved to step forward with his injured leg, which caused him to let out a loud cry and crumble to the ground as it gave out.  Kei’s eyes widened and he caught him by the shoulders as best as possible.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Stupid.  <em>Stupid.</em>  Just...get on, or you’ll hurt yourself more,” Kei said, cursing himself internally for calling Yamaguchi stupid again, because this surely wasn’t the time, but he was nervous and couldn’t control what was coming out of his mouth.  Not that he ever had much of a filter in the first place.  After a moment’s hesitation and whimpering, Yamaguchi nodded shyly and Kei turned around and wrapped his arms carefully around the backs of Tadashi’s legs as the latter hoisted himself up unsteadily on one knee.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Kei’s home was closer, which meant the logical conclusion was that they would go there and call Yamaguchi’s mom after.  He probably could carry Yamaguchi home, Kei thought— the boy was very light —but he wasn’t sure how serious it was and knew the sooner they got ice on it, the better the situation would be.  Besides, Yamaguchi’s little sniffles in his ear were making his heart do that weird thing again and he wasn’t sure how much of that he could take.  If he was in his right mind, he would’ve been angry with the fact that Yamaguchi was probably getting snot on his neck and shirt collar, but he wasn’t.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He realized, right then and there, that there were many things that Yamaguchi could get away with just because of the sheer fact that he was Yamaguchi.  The thought almost made him stop in his tracks.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When Kei’s mom opened the door after Kei rapped against it, she gasped loudly, ushering them both inside and immediately crouching down to take a look.  She made an uneasy noise that made Kei’s heart flip, because he’d really been hoping that he was wrong for once and that Yamaguchi wasn’t all that hurt and was just being a crybaby.  Instead, his mother went into the kitchen and dialled presumably Yamaguchi's mother, holding the phone between her shoulder and ear as she opened the fridge to get an ice pack.  “Kei, go take Tadashi to the bathroom and start helping him clean up the area, I’ll call his mom and then be in— yes, hi, it’s Akari, I think Tadashi’s knee may be sprained…”  Kei didn’t hear the rest because he was already moving to the bathroom.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>With as much efficiency as he could, he set his smaller friend on the edge of the bathtub and wet a washcloth with warm water.  When he went to dab at the blood, Yamaguchi quietly stuttered, “Ts-Tsukki, it’s okay, I can—”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Shut up, Yamaguchi,” Kei said, but it didn’t have any fire in it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“...Sorry, Tsukki.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“...Just be more careful next time.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They sat in silence as Kei wiped away the scrapes clean.  However, when he moved to get the disinfectant, he noticed Yamaguchi giving him a strange look.  “...What is it?” he said uneasily, probably with less softness than he could have mustered but he really wanted to get it clean because if he got an infection there, the whole thing would be a lot worse—</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Yamaguchi burst into tears.  Again.  And there was that weird feeling in his chest.  Again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yamaguchi?  What’s wrong?  Did I press too hard?  Did I hurt you?”  Kei asked anxiously as he collapsed on his knees in front of his friend so he could be (relatively) eye-level with the other boy, clasping the freckled boy’s hands between his larger ones.  Yamaguchi started bawling even louder.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m just s-so sorry Tsukki, I know you told me to be c-careful and I was trying, I really was, but I guess I wasn’t trying hard enough because now you have to help me and you’re m-m-mad at me,” he wailed, sobbing harder and moving to hide his face in his shoulder.  Kei’s stomach lurched.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yamaguchi.  I’m not mad about you.  I just...I just want you to feel better, okay?  So let me clean this up before my mom comes back.  Okay?”  He waited with bated breath as Yamaguchi met his gaze again, looking slightly less of a trainwreck.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Y-You...You care?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A few moments ticked by as Kei contemplated this.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“...Yes, of course I care, stupid,” he finally grumbled, turning away as quick as possible to hunt for the disinfectant again, but not fast enough to avoid seeing the small smile that took the place of the frown on his friend’s face.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>See, the problem was, Yamaguchi’s tears weren’t the only thing that gave him a weird feeling.  The smiles did, too.</span>
</p>
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